Theory and experiments have demonstrated that adaptive optics can benefit many ophthalmic applications, such as improving the resolution of retina camera, improving the resolution of con-focal scanning laser tomography of the human fundus, and verifying surgical outcome prior a refractive laser surgery. To implement adaptive optics into these applications, a wavefront sensor and an aberration-compensating element are necessary to integrate into an ophthalmic instrument. The wavefront sensor is used to sense all optical aberrations of the eye and the aberration compensating element, e.g. a deformable mirror, is used to compensate these aberrations to make the eye a better optical imaging system.
For ophthalmic application of adaptive optics, the aberration of the eye is relatively stable while the eye itself may move rapidly. In a typical prior art ophthalmic adaptive optics system, both the wavefront sensor and the aberration-compensating element need to have a response time short enough to accommodate the eye movement. A characteristic eye movement can happen within a time interval of 5 ms to 100 ms. To make the wavefront sensor and the aberration-compensating element to response in such a time scale is found both challenging and expensive.